Excerpt from Leavening the Levant

Books by masters of their subjects are eagerly sought and gladly read. In the rush and exactions of modern life one finds little time and less inclination to devote to the writings of theorists or the output of dreamers. Intelligent men and women demand authentic utterances by recognized masters, especially when a country or a people are under consideration.

In this book upon Turkey we find the product of a master mind, reinforced by more than half a century of life within the country itself. Not only did Dr. Greene live within Turkey during this most critical and revolutionary period of its modern history, but he was himself an important factor in that history. He resided at different places, he spoke the vernacular of the people, he was the friend and intimate of leaders among the historic and often contending races, he observed at first hand the kaleidoscopic transformations of peoples and country and breathed the atmosphere of the East as it began to tingle with the new elements of life that filtered into it from the West, and so became able to interpret those changes into Western terms.

Not only has Dr. Greene lived in the center of the events he describes, but he has been a wise and intelligent delineator of what he saw as well as a careful student of what others have observed and written. A student and maker of history, a contributor to and an interpreter of the life and longings of the people of the Turkish Empire, the author of this book is in a position to make his hearers as well as his readers see and understand questions related to the Ottoman Empire over which multitudes have stumbled for generations.

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